


The Fine Art of Bartering

by kappamaki33



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Humor, Lampshade Hanging Fic, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-10
Updated: 2010-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-08 20:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kappamaki33/pseuds/kappamaki33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bridge bunnies, Viper jocks, and Raptor wranglers form a delicate alliance to achieve a vital common goal.  A wee bit crackish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fine Art of Bartering

**Author's Note:**

> You know how there are certain things that, realistically, the Fleet should have run out of after a couple of months, and yet five years later, they still have them? This is semi-serious crack about how that worked. Set early first season, somewhere around "Water."

  
Lee was getting soundly beaten at Triad by Boomer when the Officer of the Watch and the small, dark-haired woman he’d seen at Communications in the CIC stepped into the pilot rec room, clutching clipboards to their chests like shields as they entered enemy territory.

“Frak,” Kara said, rolling her eyes and reaching across Lee to pick up another card. “The Colonel gives Gaeta junior flight status for parking _Galactica_ at Ragnar Anchorage without scraping the paint job, and now he thinks he can just waltz into the pilot rec room?” She took another swig from the Top Gun mug and snorted in disgust. “It’s not natural, a bridge bunny with wings.”

Lee had a good handle on the names and callsigns of all of his pilots by then, but he was still struggling with the names of the rest of the crew. “The NCO with him—is her name Dee? Is that his girlfriend?”

Kara laughed. “Gaeta with a _girl_friend? I’d say ‘when pigs fly,’ but since toasters and now bunnies _are_ flying...”

“Nah, he’s with Skulls,” Crashdown said morosely, staring at his cards. “Or at least they’re having sex.” He sighed and shook his head. “A lot of very, very loud sex.”

Racetrack threw another cubit into the pot. “Ah. You got the bunk under Skulls, didn’t you?”

Crashdown nodded. “Look, it’s not like I have anything against enthusiastic survival sex. I get it. It’s just...we’ve _survived_ already, you know? Now that the Cylons are giving us the opportunity to sleep for longer than thirty-two minutes straight, I’d really like to take advantage of it.”

“Excuse me, if we could have your attention for a minute,” Gaeta called out. He had to repeat himself a few more times before the din quieted down. When he had almost everyone’s attention, he began. “Petty Officer Dualla and I have come on behalf of the CIC crew to make you pilots a proposition.”

“Well, I usually expect dinner and a movie first, Lieutenant Gaeta, but for you, I’ll make an exception,” teased Flat-Top. The pilots all laughed, but Gaeta just looked annoyed. “But I’m surprised at you guys, throwing just two lone little bunnies down into the Viper Pit. Your friends thought sending the two of you to handle the twenty of us was fair?”

“Hey, there’s a reason why they call them bridge _bunnies_, with all that stamina,” Deadbolt said. Lee thought that pushed the joke too far, but everyone but Gaeta laughed, including Dee. He was just starting to learn that _Galactica_ was a bit more rough-and-tumble of a battlestar than he’d been on before.

Gaeta rolled his eyes. “Not _that_ kind of proposition, Ensign,” he said, displaying his mastery of the bridge bunny skill of inflecting ranks so they sounded like another word for “dumbass.” “We have a proposal.”

Racetrack fluttered her eyelashes and clasped her hands together dramatically. “Oh, how romantic!” She turned in her chair toward Skulls, who was playing cards at a table on the other side of the room. Judging by the look on his face, he already knew this was not heading anywhere good. “Are you going to get down on one knee in front of your darling Hamish?”

“C’mon, Racetrack, like that’s anything new,” Kara drawled, narrowing her eyes at Gaeta. She was giving him that look that Lee recognized as her zeroing in on her prey. “Why, just this morning in the Officer’s Head, I walked in on Gaeta on his knees in front of Skulls. Though I’ve never heard it called ‘proposing’ before.”

The room erupted in even louder laughter than the last time. Kara smiled and winked at Gaeta as she brought her mug to her lips again. Gaeta turned beet red. Lee knew there was a great opportunity for another blowjob joke in there somewhere, what with all the potential the term “Officer’s Head” held in this context, but when he saw how Skulls was slouching so much it looked like he was trying to hide his entire body behind his cards, he decided it would probably be bad form for the CAG to push things any further.

“Fine, if you flyboys don’t want to get in on the best deal around since the world ended, we can always take our offer to the knuckledraggers,” yelled Dee, tipping her head up defiantly. Everyone quieted down again.

She looked to Gaeta, who had recovered somewhat by that time, and nodded for him to begin. “Right. So, as you know, the civilian Fleet with us includes several container ships and freighters. The CIC has been in communication with these ships, putting together a list of the Fleet’s resources. We recognized that information as to which ships have what goods might be very useful to the Raptor squadron leaders as they plan shuttle traffic between _Galactica_ and the Fleet, particularly in helping decide which ships need to be visited first and how long of a layover should be scheduled at each.”

“So you’re saying the bridge bunnies are willing to give us a list of all the shit on each ship so we can get to the ones with the good stuff first, before they get a chance to sell it to anybody else?” asked Kara, hiding her interest by putting her feet up on an empty chair and leaning back with her hands folded behind her head. “What’s the catch?”

“The CIC crew want a cut of whatever you get. Twenty—”

“Twenty-five percent,” Dee finished. Gaeta gave her a look like she’d changed the negotiation plans without warning him, but he went along with it.

Most of the room groaned. Crashdown whined, “We’d be bartering _our_ own personal stuff for this new stuff, _we’d_ be hauling shit around in our Raptors, and you guys want a fourth of it all for making some phone calls and a spreadsheet?”

Dee answered, “Under normal circumstances, you’d have a point, but there is one ship in this Fleet that might as well be carrying a cargo bay full of gold, sir.”

“Is it a ship full of chocolate?” Racetrack asked.

“Possibly even better than that, sir,” Dee said seriously.

Lee turned to Kara for guidance. She shrugged, but she looked like she thought the idea wasn’t half-bad.

“Deal. Tell us what you’ve got,” said Lee.

Dee and Gaeta smiled and held their clipboards at the ready.

“Okay, the _Carilion Trader_ and the _Thera Sita_ were empty and on their way back to Aerilon, so don’t bother with them,” Dee started.

“The _Diomedes_ was taking a shipment of pineapples to Chiron, but they’re starting to get a little overripe, so you might want to do that one sooner rather than later,” said Gaeta.

“The _Enkidu_ has ten thousand reams of paper and a few thousand boxes of pencils.”

“That’s the best you’ve got?” sneered Thumper.

“It gets better,” Gaeta reassured. “The _Kiya_, eighty thousand units of various hygiene and cosmetic products.” At least most of the female pilots got excited at that one.

“I’ll pay an extra ten percent to anyone who can get extra-strength deodorant for Crashdown,” Boomer called out. Several pilots giggled, and Crashdown shot her a scathing look. “Hey, if I have to spend most of my time cooped up in a Raptor with you, I’m going to damn well make sure you smell half-way decent.”

Dee scanned her list, “The _Gideon_, seventy thousand cans of coffee; the _Gemini_, one hundred thousand units of baby formula; the _Salpica_, video and audio tape recorders and blank cassettes; the _Vena Capa_, women’s formal and business attire...”

“What’s the pot of gold already?” yelled Dragon from the back of the room.

Dee and Gaeta grinned at each other. Gaeta asked in a low voice, “Can I tell them?” Dee nodded. Gaeta cleared his throat and said triumphantly, “The _Greenleaf_: large freighter carrying cigarettes, condoms, lubricant, and booze of every variety.”

Everyone sat in silent, slack-jawed awe as Gaeta beamed. Lee finally said, “Lieutenant, if this is some kind of a joke...”

Gaeta put his hand over his heart. “Sir, I swear on my honor as a Colonial officer, an Aquarian, and a human being, I would never joke about something this serious.”

Lee barely heard Kara mutter, “Maybe there’s a reason we keep that little frak around after all.” Then she slammed her mug on the table and yelled to the whole room, “Field trip to the Ship of Sin!”


End file.
